Category: Teaching & Learning Theories

Learning objectives are brief statements that explain what learners will be expected to learn by the end of the school year, class, unit, lesson, project, or class period. Sometimes, learning objectives are the interim educational goals that educators establish for learners who are working toward meeting more comprehensive learning standards.

Defining the learning objective is complicated because educators utilize a broad variety of terms for learning objectives. These words may or may not be used synonymously from place to place. For instance, the terms student learning objective, benchmark, grade-level indicator, learning target, performance indicator, and learning standard may refer to specific learning objectives in educational contexts. Educators also create a broad variety of homegrown terms for learning objectives, which further complicates things.

Learning Objective Functions

While educators utilize learning objectives in distinct ways to achieve various teaching goals, the concept is closely related to learning progressions, or the sequencing of educational expectations across several developmental stages, ages, or grade levels. Learning objectives are a good way for educators to structure and sequence what students are to learn. They plan out learning goals for a specific teaching period, usually to move learners toward achieving bigger, longer-term educational goals such as meeting class learning expectations, passing on a standardized test, or graduating from high school ready for what’s next.

Learning objectives are a key strategy in proficiency-based learning, which refers to systems of instruction, assessment, grading, and educational reporting based on learners demonstrating understanding of the skills they are expected to learn before they move to the next lesson or receive a diploma.

Learning objectives are being used in educators’ job-performance evaluations, and the term learner learning objectives are associated with this practice in many states.

Learning objectives are also a way to create and articulate educational expectations for learners to know precisely what is expected of them. When learning objectives are communicated to learners, the reasoning goes, learners will be more likely to achieve the goals. When learning objectives are absent or unclear, learners may not know what’s expected of them, leading to confusion or other factors that could impede the learning process.

Types of Learning Objectives

While the terminology, structure, and utilization of learning objectives can differ in different school districts and states, the following are a few of the significant forms that learning objectives take:

School-year or grade-level objectives: Learning objectives may be synonymous with learning standards, which are concise, written descriptions of the things that learners should know and do at a specific stage of their education. Grade-level learning objectives explain what learners should achieve academically by the end of a particular grade level or grade span.

Course or program objectives: Teachers may also decide on learning objectives for classes or other educational programs, such as summer-school programs. The objectives may be the same educational goals described in learning standards or explain interim goals.

Unit or project objectives: Teachers may decide learning objectives for teaching units, which usually comprise a series of lessons focused on a topic or common theme, such as a historical period. In the case of project-based learning—a teaching approach that utilizes multifaceted projects as a central organizing strategy for educating learners—educators may decide learning objectives for the end of long-term projects rather than a unit.

Lesson or class-period objectives: Teachers may also articulate learning objectives for specific lessons that compose a unit, project, or class. They may decide learning objectives for each day they train learners (in this case, the term learning target is often used). For instance, educators may write a set of daily learning objectives on the blackboard or post them to an online class management system to know what the learning expectations are for a particular class period. In this case, learning objectives move learners progressively toward meeting more broad learning goals for a unit or class.

Framing Learning Objectives

In practice, educators will commonly express learning objectives to achieve distinct teaching goals or encourage learners to think about the learning process in a specific way.

The following are several ways that learning objectives may be framed or expressed by educators:

Descriptive statements: Objectives may be expressed as terse statements describing what learners should know by the end of a defined teaching period. For instance: State learning standards, which can include various learning objectives, are commonly expressed as descriptive statements.

“I can” statements: Teachers may select to express learning objectives as “I can” statements as a way to conceptualize the objectives from a learner’s perspective. The idea is that “I can” statements encourage learners to connect with the learning goals and experience a greater personal accomplishment idea when the learning objectives are achieved. 

“Learners will be able to” statements: These statements are a common format for learning objectives, and the abbreviation SWBAT may be used in lieu of the entire phrase.

Are you a teacher who is new to explicit instruction and needs help implementing it in your classroom? Then you have come to the right place. This article will tell you how to implement the four parts of explicit instruction into your classroom.

1. Model with clear explanations.

How: Explain or show the skill in the same way learners will practice it. Focus on the critical parts of the content you are teaching.

Why: When expectations are clear, it takes out the guesswork from learning. Plus, some learners may need to see a model several times. To decide if that’s necessary, check for comprehension by asking learners to help you do an example.

Planning Tips

• Make sure the skill you select to teach matches the learning outcome.
• Write a clear, concise explanation of the skill in your lesson plan.
• Double-check that your explanation includes each of the steps.
• Plan for several examples.
• Model the examples in the same way learners will practice it.
• Place a note in your plan to check for learners’ understanding periodically.

2. Express your thinking process.

How: While you are modeling, do a think-aloud of what’s happening in your mind. If you compare fractions, you may discuss how you recognized that the denominators are different. You might say, “I notice these 2 denominators are different. In this fraction, the denominator is a 6, but in this fraction, the denominator is a 5.”

Why: Learners who learn and think differently often don’t know how to begin a task or what to do when they’re stuck. Modeling self-talk can be helpful for these learners.

Planning Tips

• Script how you will express your thinking. Don’t write out everything, but it’s essential to have your most essential points planned.
• Think of places where learners might get stuck. Plan how you’ll work through those tricky areas.

3. Provide chances to practice.

How: During guided practice, you may work through many problems as a class and either pre-correct or correct errors as they happen. Guided practice is your chance to ensure that every step is clear to learners so that they are ready to work independently. If learners haven’t grasped the skill, you can model or verbalize it again.

Once learners are successful with guided practice, move forward with independent practice.  Resist the urge to introduce difficult content. Instead, focus on independent practice assignments that align with the skill you modeled. Learners should master the assignments during independent practice about 90 percent of the time.

After independent practice, perform a cumulative review of learned skills. The review will help learners gain and retain automaticity with the skills.

Why: Learners need to practice a skill for it to remain in their long-term memory. Guided and independent practice and cumulative review can help this process.

Planning Tips

• Plan enough time for several chances to practice.

For guided practice:

• Plan practice activities that students will be successful with.
• Script your prompts, and remember that you may need to adjust your script at the moment to meet learners’ needs.

For independent practice:

• Review expectations and the resources learners will utilize before beginning.
• Design chances that you feel learners will be able to work on without support.

Use several ways of getting learner responses during practice to check the learner’s understanding. For instance:

• Plan for verbal responses, such as choral responses.
• Plan for written responses, such as “stop and jot” or writing a response on dry-erase boards.
• Plan for physical responses, such as nonverbal signals.

Cumulative review:

• Identify the set of skills necessary to meet the learning goals.
• Plan strategies to review previously taught skills that ladder up to the new skills you’re teaching.
• Plan strategies to review the newly acquired skills or info.
• Keep the cumulative review brief and focused.

4. Give feedback.

How: As your learners engage in guided and independent practice, give them immediate and actionable feedback.

Why: A quick response will guide learners to success and will reduce the chance that they’ll practice a skill or strategy with errors.

Planning Tips

• Make a note of times in the lesson when you’ll be able to move about the room to make informal observations of learners.
• Attach a sheet of paper with your learners’ names to a clipboard.
• Leave time to deliver specific feedback to each learner.
• Write a note in your plan to analyze learner data after the lesson. You’ll want to utilize the data to make decisions about what instruction a learner needs next.

Have you ever attempted to follow a new recipe, only to identify that a step is missing or unclear? Or maybe the directions had too much info for your brain to process.  The same thing can happen when your learners learn something new. Some learners can make inferences to figure out the next steps or to work through ambiguity. But for learners who learn and think differently, one unclear direction or having too many things to remember can be a deal-breaker.

That’s why it’s so essential to make sure your instruction is as clear and complete as it can be. One way to accomplish this is to utilize explicit instruction. This is a way to deliver direct, structured instruction to learners—from kindergartners to high-schoolers. It makes lessons crystal clear and shows learners how to start and succeed in a task. You can utilize explicit instruction with your whole class. Or you can utilize it to pre-teach or re-teach a skill to one learner or a group of learners.

Why Use Explicit Instruction?

Explicit instruction is a well-researched, highly efficient teaching strategy. It can be beneficial to both learners and educators.

It makes inquiry-based learning easier. Explicit instruction gives learners who are usually left out of inquiry-based learning the info and skills they need to engage. Explicit instruction can also teach learners the processes needed for inquiry-based learning. Explicit instruction isn’t just for basic educational skills. Learners often need explicit modeling and feedback on higher-order skills like decision making and social skills.

There’s less of a load on working memory. Learners who learn and think differently often have trouble with working memory. For example, they may struggle to understand the idea of a long series of directions. Explicit instruction breaks learning up into smaller chunks, lightening the “cognitive load.”  That frees up learners’ working memory, which is essential because learning skills require a lot of working memory.

Attention issues become less of a barrier. Without explicit instruction, learners who struggle with attention may not attend to the most important ideas in a lesson. With explicit instruction, you cue learners into the essential info.

It helps overcome language barriers. When you utilize consistent and clear language in each step of instruction, students aren’t overwhelmed with managing new language demands. Explicit instruction is correlated with increased achievement gains among ELLs.  

It allows for various degrees of practice. Explicit instruction is also efficient for learners who need intensive intervention. In your school district, you may call this support “Tier 3 intervention.” These learners need to practice a skill 10 to 30  times more than their peers. Explicit instruction can give them those chances. It also provides you with a structure to make sure learners are capable and successful as they practice.

It allows data collection and analysis. Each time learners practice a skill, you have a chance to collect data. After the explicit instruction cycle, you can utilize that data to plan your next lesson, whether re-teaching or moving on to the next skill progression. This info helps you meet the needs of each learner and be nimble in your curriculum development.